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from the Jensen Family – currently in sweden :-)

Just write – and nothing else.

There are times when all we need to do is to drop in the words – Really crank out the text. (For me, that’s most of the day.) We don’t need distractions and we don’t need a bloated, high maintenance and expensive word processor with way too many features and way too slow a load time (I’m looking at you, Microsoft Word).

What we need is a minimalist, distraction-free word processor — and being the cheapskates that we are, we want it free.

Luckily, there are a number of alternatives. I personally two of these, depending on where I am and what I need to do and I have tried a few others, but always returning back to the safe bets. They do what you need to do — just write — and they do it well. If you don’t need a million features and don’t want to shell out a fortune write something, give one of these great alternatives a spin.

Google Docs – a popular online word processor offered by Google, Docs (formerly known as Writely) doesn’t offer the full features of Microsoft Word, but it is quick and easy and can be accessed from anywhere. The choice of many web workers. And with the added excel and share-point like functionality – I can work in teams with friends and colleagues.

AbiWord – everyone’s favorite cross-platform, open-source minimalist word processor, AbiWord is a desktop app but launches and runs so much faster than apps like Microsoft Word or Open Office. It’s light, but it does have most of the commonly used features of the bigger desktop word processors.